Dallas Stars Blog

in the aftermath of Flames 3, Stars 2

Point-counterpoint: The Stars came away from Thursday night’s game glad to get a point that they believe will be important next spring. Tonight, it allowed them to tie Detroit atop the conference in points with the Red Wings holding a game in hand. But there’s the point that got away in the closing minutes.

Jamie Benn’s center-ice donnybrook in the first period with Jarome Iginla, after Benn put a hard hit on Calgary defenseman Mark Giordano, took the Flames captain out of the game for much of the first period to get patched up when he was bloodied around his right eye. But the fight seemed to energe the crowd much more than the team, and Crawford mentioned it also took something out of Benn the rest of the night.

Crawford said of Iginla could appreciate Benn sticking with him during the long fight.

“I’m sure when he was that age, he did something like that,” Crawford said. “That was a long, long battle. We didn’t use Jamie on the penalty kill much after that. We knew that altercation took a lot of energy out of both players. From that standpoint, I thought it was one of the highlights of the game. I’m sure you’ll see it on most of the hockey shows tomorrow.”

Lehtonen called it a weird game. His teammates got only six shots on goal in the first 40 minutes, but Calgary didn’t have many quality chances through the first two periods. Then after Brenden Morrow’s goal in the early period gave the Stars their first lead of the game, the Flames responded with a barrage.

“I was happy that I was getting more shots,” said Lehtonen, who is 7-0-3 in his last 10 starts at home. “I’m sure [Calgary goaltender Miikka] Kiprusoff was not feeling very comfortable. We couldn’t get it going anywhere.”

Ribeiro got the Stars back to 1-1 with his goal late in the first period, a quick shot from the left of Kiprusoff after the goalie had to come all the way across the crease following the pass from Loui Eriksson. But when the Stars needed Ribeiro to score in the third round of the shootout to keep the game going, he was unable to get a shot away.

“i just threw it too far ahead, trying to bring it back on my backhand,” Ribeiro said. “It slipped away. We’ll take this point and know we need to play much better.”

Said Crawford: “You’ve got to park this one as quick as you can.”

With assists, Eriksson and Brad Richards kept their point streaks alive at five games each. During that span, Eriksson has three goals and six assists, Richards three and two. Morrow has four goals in his last five games having being shut out in the previous 10 games.